


save your strength and stay alive.

by Maura_Moo



Category: Video Blogging RPF, hamilton:an american musical, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Adopted Children, Angst, Blood, Butterfly, Character Death, Child Death, CrankGameplays - Freeform, Death, Hamilton AU, Hospital, Human Mark Fischbach, Hurt Ethan Nestor, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I cried writing this, Markiplier - Freeform, Markiplier x OC - Freeform, One Shot, POV Third Person, Pain, Reprise, Sadness, Song: Stay Alive (Reprise), Youtuber - Freeform, based on stay alive, dad markiplier, mentioned adultery, shot, upset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:48:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22794280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maura_Moo/pseuds/Maura_Moo
Summary: Mark hated hospitals. They were always so large, with people crawling around them like rats. The smell of blood and bodily fluids mixing with the smell of stale cleaning solution and re-cooked microwave meals. They made his head swim and his heart pound with painful guilt. His feet pounded against the freckled linoleum like fingers across staccato piano keys. The walls shot past his eye-line like bullets. He felt sick and stupid.
Relationships: Ethan Nestor/Original Character(s), Mark Fischbach/Original Female Character(s), platonic ethan nestor/ Mark fischbach
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	save your strength and stay alive.

Mark hated hospitals. They were always so large, with people crawling around them like rats. The smell of blood and bodily fluids mixing with the smell of stale cleaning solution and re-cooked microwave meals. They made his head swim and his heart pound with painful guilt. His feet pounded against the freckled linoleum like fingers across staccato piano keys. The walls shot past his eye-line like bullets. He felt sick and stupid. 

The waiting room was packed but the people were less like humans; more like soulless black shadows that haunted him as he paced. “Mark Fischbach?” a short woman dressed in blood-stained surgical greens stared up at him through golden hair. 

Mark couldn’t read her face, sunken blue-green eyes shimmering with professional composure and plump lips pressed into a thin line of neutralness. She stared at him and he stared at her. 

“Where is my son!?” the question was sudden and whistled out from slightly parted chewed lips. The doctor’s lips moved slowly and wordlessly and stopped when he grabbed ahold of her shoulders with trembling fingers. “Can I see him please” 

Carefully the doctor nodded, shifting herself out of his light grip. “Yes. right, this way. Follow me” she pushed the door behind her open, “but you’ll have to understand. The bullet entered just above his hip and lodged itself just under his right arm. He’s lost a lot of blood.” She spoke with her hands, flailing them to trace the pattern of the bullet. Mark winced, teeth clamping down on his bottom lip. He had to be strong, even if it was for a little bit.

White walls. White doors. Crimson sheets. The smell of blood. A pounding heartbeat and the pained wails of a mousy haired boy with eyes of bold excitement. “Ethan?” with one last glancing look back at the doctor, Mark trekked in. the souls of his shoes stuck to the floor as he walked into the scene in front of him. 

No matter how many times he had come across bodies in horror games, they always terrified him; with their lifeless eyes and soulless expressions. They always looked so weak, so helpless. But what was happening in front of him was no video game, he couldn’t press escape and free himself for this scene that hissed as it burned into his brain. Ethan was not a collection of pixels; he was a human. He was his son. 

And he laid in front of him with tear-tracked cheeks and fear etched with a knife into every inch of his face. “Pa!” he tried his best to smile as Mark tugged the chair to sit at the head of his son. “I did exactly as you said pa..I-I held my head up high” 

Mark stared at Ethan, shoulders hunched forwards and hands craned into the front of his stomach as if trying to hold it in. He felt sick. “I know...I know”

“You did everything just right” 

“I’m gonna die ain’t I dad” 

“no .. no... shhh.” Mark reached his fingers down Ethan’s cheek, trying to soothe his rasping breaths into a steady rhythm. 

“Even before we got to ten..I-I was aiming for-for the sky” Ethan reached up, two fingers weakly pointed into the air. A pistol flashed quickly in front of Mark’s eyes and he flinched. Ethan was shaking, maybe from pain, maybe from the fear. Mark didn’t know. Mark didn’t care. He laced his fingers with Ethan’s, clinging to hand between both of his. He was cold. “I was aiming for the sky” 

“No!” The blood-curdling scream of a woman caused both men to jump. Meredith stood in the fresh-hold, hands gripped into tight fists as she ran over to Ethan

“Is he breathing?! Is he going to survive this!” the pain in her green eyes swirled into anger as she grabbed Mark by the collar. “Mark did you know!” Her lips pressing into an irate thin line. Her grip tightened and Mark felt like the walls were closing in around him.

Ethan took a sharp intake of breath, wrapping his arms insecurely around his mother's middle. Bloody fingernails clawing at the thin fabric of her sundress. “Mom?” Meredith turned, her bottom lip stuffing down to her sides. This was not the time nor place for her to air any grievances with her husband. Her son needed her to be strong. She wanted to be strong. For Ethan. “I’m so sorry for forgetting-” 

Carefully, she tugged herself next to him. Her head resting against Ethan’s shoulder as she held him, fingers playing loosely with the thin, rough fabric of the blood-spattered hospital gown. “Shh..shh..forgetting? What did you forget my dear?” She stared down at the man, cradling him in her arms. Meredith tried to smile down at Ethan but the corners of her lips betrayed her and her face faltered into a frown. She watched as Ethan struggled to find his voice between the screaming of the machines and the gentle sobs of his own fear. 

“I’m so sorry for forgetting what you taught me” 

Ethan stared up at Meredith, gripping at the fabric of her dress. She could feel the blood on his hands soaking through and drying on her leg. It made her sick. “Shh...shh” she smiled crookedly, carefully running her finger through his hair. “My son” the word cracked like glass in her mouth and she let out a pained wail. Shards of previous memories fell out of her mouth like snowflakes, collecting emptily in the stagnant air around them. 

Her grip tightened and she pulled Ethan closer to her. Meredith used her arms as shields, guarding him against his own demise. Protecting him against the sinful eyes of his father. As she watched her son dart dangerously close to death’s door, her mind raced with guilt. Parents were meant to protect their children from anything. From monsters. Whether they be the monsters that hide under their beds or the monsters that walk the streets. Her eyes conveyed one simple message. I’ve failed you Ethan and I’m sorry.

“We played piano” the words barely sounded like words. More like light cries from a newborn. Ethan tried to smile as he laid his hands under hers. “You would put your hands on mine.” instinctively, she grasped at his fingers, bringing them up to her mouth to kiss at his fingertips. 

“You changed the melody every time” she chuckled into the taste of blood. 

“I would always change the line” Green eyes smiled with sadness as he laid his head in the crook of her neck. His vision was failing and he could feel his heart slowing. It got harder to breathe and Ethan’s blunt nails found their way into her palm. He wanted the pain to stop but he wanted to keep fighting. “I’m still here mom” his half-lidded eyes seemed to scream at the curled strands of her hair. He could smell the blood and the wet smell of the ground; it overpowered the smell of rose blossom and gingerbread and home. Ethan wanted to go home. 

"Un Deux trois quatre"the light notes of her voice pushed through the rush of blood in his ears and the sound of his heartbeat. 

"Un Deux trois quatre" he copied her slowly, every word punctuated with a sniffling intake of air. 

The machines had silenced now and the world began to darken. There was no beat, no melody. No gentle whisper of his mother’s sweet voice and no painful call of his father's cries. There was just silence. 

Silence and darkness. 

The light that shone so brightly in the young man’s eyes fizzled out in front of Mark with a final countdown. The mirror of life broke into shards and mark stood powerlessly aside as Ethan’s body went limp in the arms of the women he loved and so deeply.

"Sept huit…" Meredith pulled away, his body was already heavy in her arms as it rolled down her body. He looked so peaceful. The deep-set lines of pain had released and the normal indents of a childish smile shone against his pimpled skin. A single tear rolled slowly down his face and she carefully tubbed it away with her thumb, it sat there, clinging to her for a few seconds, before melting into the back of her hand. 

“Goodnight sweet Prince. Mom loves you” Meredith laid down next to her son. Hiding her face away in his shoulder as she sobbed into the sanguinary cotton of his hospital gown. 

Mark stared down at his family; broken and crippled. He smoothed a hand over Ethan’s hair and down his face as if trying to imprint him into his memory forever. He didn’t want to forget Ethan or the way he looked in the dim sunset.  
Mark leaned forward, brushing his fingers against her. His heart broke as he watched her recoil and stare at him with grieving hate in her eyes “NO! DON’T TOUCH ME!” her lips pressed into a thin line as she once again tried to hide in the tensing body of her son. 

Mark sighed allowing his eyes to wander painfully over to the window. He had never noticed the garden before. White Chrysanthemums laid against the slightly fogged glass, their heads bowed as if mourning the loss they had just witnessed. 

In the silence of the garden, things seemed to stand still. Even the beating of a blue butterfly’s wings softened the ache mark felt as it flew up to the window before flying away.

“Goodbye, Ethan.”


End file.
